Heather Lynn Scott McDaniel Memorial Scholarship

Even before I could talk, my life presented hurdle after hurdle to me and my family. But through all of it, I overcame them and became stronger. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in May of 2003 to a healthy family and a loving community. People always say it takes a village to raise a child, and I doubt that there is another place on the planet that could host a community like New Orleans. My parents told me that everyone there knows everyone, and that thought always excited me. I love the idea of having a friend everywhere I go, and I have grown into that lifestyle at Baylor University, making friends in everything that I do. After having grown up there, my mom truly thought that New Orleans would be "our forever home." Unfortunately, though, hurricane Katrina had other plans. In August of 2005, everything changed for my family and the hopes that they had for us. In the wake of the category five storm that wrecked southeastern Louisiana, my immediate family was uprooted and the course of our lives had been altered. My parents eventually found jobs and a house for sale in Garland, Texas, which soon became the place I call home. As I began to find my way around this new place, my sister and I received the worst news that we have ever been given. We were always told that good things happen for good people and the announcement of my dad's incarceration challenged everything we knew. Our dad was a hero and a role model for us, and to know that even he could go to prison was a shock that none of us were ready to handle. We became a different family, one without an important figure for many reasons. A wife was left without a husband, two kids were left without a father, and the household was left without a voice of reason. For seven long and toilsome years, we were forced to continue our life without my dad. My grandmother had to become an emergency parent again, my mother had to learn how to navigate her life effectively as a single mother, and my sister and I had to learn to grow up without our father, who had been our guide through our entire lives up to this point. This caused my mother to become a different person. She began to put up walls that I had never seen before, for everyone outside of our lives and even some of those inside. She was slow to trust people, and she was much more paranoid about the world. My dad's absence changed how she saw everything, including her kids. However, through all of these life-changing events, we survived. And more than that, we thrived. We were able to build a new community in Texas, beyond the family we already knew. We turned our house into a home, one that would know the struggles of fatherlessness, floods, and freezes galore. And for me, I found my way in life. I found stable communities in my neighborhood, my schools, and many other places around Garland. I joined Boy Scout Troop 57 and became so much more than I ever thought I could. Nowadays, I am an Eagle Scout, a mentor, and a noteworthy figure around my council and across the nation. The challenges I faced throughout my life have shown me that I can make it through anything that life throws at me, and that belief follows me to this very day.